Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Banana Pudding without the wafers

The internet is an amazing thing for lots of reasons, but especially for cooking. I have a fairly large collection of cookbooks, I used to read and reference them all the time. But these days I rarely have time, so it's nice to know that I can plug x ingredient and the word recipe into Google and come out with some ideas. Not tested, mind you, not proven, but at least a starting point for a technique or a flavor combination.

One of my favorite resources is theChowhound Home Cooking Message Board. It's populated, seemingly 24/7, by a selection of good cooks who almost always have the answer to your questions. Slow cooker recipes? Check. How to keep galangal and lemongrass? Check. How to make banana pudding without the wafers? Check!

I'm not a big dessert maker. Savories are my bag, and I'm frankly a little afraid of dessert chemistry. So I was happy to have a place to turn for pudding advice after my chocolate puddingcame out one-dimensionally sweet, without the full mouthfeel of the real thing. And after I discovered that apparently what most of the country means by banana pudding is packaged vanilla pudding with banana slices, layered with Nilla wafers. I can see the attraction if you grew up with that as comfort food, but I didn't, so I don't even want to know.

Thanks, theSauce, for your recipe for real homemade banana pudding. I made a change or two from the original, linked below, but overall this is theSauce's vision and technique. It was sweet for my taste, but R pronounced it perfect.

Combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large saucepan. Whisk in the milk until the mixture is completely smooth. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir until the mixture is warm.

Whisk the egg yolks in a small bowl until blended. Stir a small amount of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks and stir (to prevent the egg yolks from curdling). Cook for about 10 minutes, whisking continuously, until the custard is quite thick. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter, rum and bananas.

Pour the custard into a bowl or into individual ramekins. Pressing a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding will prevent a "skin" from forming. Place in the fridge to cool completely before serving, at least one hour for ramekins and a few hours for a full bowl.

this recipe was written extremely horribly. very unclear. i had to go on youtube to figure out how to make a custard. thanks for nothing. yikes. how much hot milk mixture to add? add what to the saucepan? proofread your recipe. YIKES

AND when i went to the comment section to get help. all i saw was someone saying how good this was instead of answering all the decriphancies. when you write a horrible recipe at least correct your mistakes in the comment area instead of acting like you did nothing wrong under an anonynmous username. yikes you messed up my whole dessert now i have to start over.

So, the recipe wasn't written out perfectly, but if anyone knows how to make custard, then it wasn't that difficult to follow.

I modified it a bit for myself (increased the amount of each ingredient) and pureed the bananas and added them in at the end. Tasted fantastic!!

For anyone who doesn't understand about adding the hot milk to the egg yolk, you just add a small portion of the hot milk first to the eggs, to temper them (prevents curdling, as he stated) and then add the tempered egg yolk to the sauce pan, continuing to cook all of it until it is nice and thick. Then, once you have a very thick sauce, remove it from heat, and add the remaining three ingredients.

I had been looking everywhere for just a plain banana pudding, not one with the wafers and sliced bananas.

If you make the other type with cornstarch pudding it is pretty good but I am glad you posted a recipe without the cookies and meringe. I understand your comment about the chocolate pudding too. I doubled the cocoa because I thought it tasted more like sweetness than chocolate myself (I thought double might be a bit much but it was just right for me). I might have reduced the sugar a bit too but don't remember. I have some bananas that are ready to be too ripe soon and look forward to trying your recipe. Thank you.

This pudding was awesome!! I didn't have any rum, but it still came out great. I also substituted another egg yolk for the 1/3 cup corn starch (I only had 2T left), and it still came out great. I was eating it hot off the burner it was so good. Thanks for posting!